Page 29 of The Playboy Meets His Match
“I can’t agree with that. It seems to me that it’s exactly what both of us want.” His voice was husky and raw. He stretched as if struggling to regain his control.
“My sister was devastated by a broken heart. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me.”
“Scared you might fall in love with me?” he asked with a challenging note in his voice.
She tilted her head to study him. “As scared as you are to fall in love—period. With me or anyone else.”
His blue-green eyes turned icy, and she could feel a wall come up between them. When he wanted to, he shut himself off, keeping part of himself entirely private. Sometime in the past someone had hurt him badly, but he didn’t want to share who or when or how with her, and she wasn’t going to pry.
“Merry, I know this won’t last and you know it won’t. But why not enjoy the pleasure we find in each other? You’ve kissed guys before.”
“Not like you,” she answered honestly, and he drew a deep breath.
He moved to the end of the sofa away from her and raked his hair away from his face with both hands. Shaking his hair back from his face, he seemed to be gulping for breath.
She pulled her T-shirt swiftly over her head and jammed the wispy lace bra into a jeans pocket. As she stepped into her jeans, she saw him watching her intently.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said in a low voice.
“Thank you,” she replied while her heart drummed with pleasure. She reminded herself he had told that to plenty of other women and not to be bowled over by sweet talk and hot kisses, but her heart wasn’t listening to her head. When he caught her wrist lightly, she looked at him in surprise. The touch was casual, merely done to get her attention, yet it sent shock waves reverberating through her. Her body ached for his touch, for his kisses, for him to finish what he had started.
That wasn’t something she wanted to let him know. Unable to summon words, she looked at him quizzically.
“Don’t go. I’m not sleepy and I know you’re not. Let’s just sit and talk,” he said, releasing her wrist.
“Just sit and talk—you promise?”
“Sure,” he answered. He wiped his brow, beaded with sweat, and she still felt hot, too. “You say you want commitment, Merry. How much commitment?”
Surprised by his question, she sat and put her bare feet on the sofa, hugging her knees and facing him while she mulled his question.
“An affair—long-term? Marriage?” he asked. “What do you really want when you talk about commitment?”
“I’m very old-fashioned, Jason,” she answered, knowing this would be the answer that would send him running or bring that cold wall higher between them. “I want it all. I want marriage. And for me, marriage is sacred and special.”
“How’ll you know when you meet the right person?”
“I’ll know,” she said quietly, trying to avoid looking too deeply into her feelings now as she studied the handsome cowboy facing her. She didn’t want to admit the bald truth, but her heart was screaming her feelings.
“Just like that?” he asked quizzically. “Like lightning striking or what?” He sounded sincerely puzzled, as if she were the expert and he the novice in dealing with sex and love.
“I’ll know the way anyone knows when she or he is in love. Surely you’ve been in love?”
He looked away, but not before she caught a strange flash that was almost a grimace. “I’ve loved, and I don’t believe you if you tell me you’ve never been in love. You’ve dated, haven’t you?”
“Yes. I haven’t ever been truly, deeply in love. I don’t want what you’re accustomed to—flings that hold no strings of any sort. That’s different.”
He pulled at his jeans stretched across his knee and glanced at her, then looked back at his knee. His scowl hinted at some inner turmoil raging, but she remained silent, knowing if he wanted to say something to her, he would.
She put her head back against the sofa and closed her eyes, aware that they were at an impasse. And aware that she already cared too much about him. He was attracted to her, but did she want to give what was between them any chance to bloom? Could she risk her heart in dating him? Questions swirled in her mind and there were no easy answers except the one that tore at her every time she came back to it—go back to Dallas and get away from him. Even given the few people she knew in Royal, she had heard talk about Jason being such a playboy.
“Merry, I loved someone and I got hurt badly once,” he admitted. She raised her head to listen. “I don’t ever want to get hurt like that again,” he said.
As she heard him talk about someone he obviously must have loved deeply, pain cut deep in her heart. At the same time, she realized he had just opened a part of himself to her that she suspected he kept closed from nearly everyone else.
“I’m sorry,” she replied quietly. “Love carries risk and sometimes loving means hurting. Were you engaged?”
He was silent so long, she wondered whether her question had intruded too much. He shook his head finally. “No. When I was five, my mother left my father and my brothers and me. She remarried.”
